After three years of meticulous crafting, the 4.5 meter high piano will be unveiled on March 25 in Tolmacs (65 km north of Budapest), before it will be moved to its final destination, Frahm's studio at the Funkhaus Berlin.

Li was born near Boston. His parents came to the U.S. from China in the 1980s. He says they had few opportunities to hear classical music growing up during the Cultural Revolution. Li began playing piano at age four and thought of it only as a hobby. But one day, when he was 11, playing Beethoven's First Piano Concerto, everything changed.

"He shared stories about him 'getting his wings', being a pilot, the war, and sadly the loss of his beloved wife on Christmas Eve a few years ago.
I noticed he had a piano with music open - one of his favourite Chopin pieces he said, a nocturne."

This particular piano dates back to 1720 and was invented by Bartholomeo Cristofori (1655-1731), who began his first designs as early as 1698-1700. He had developed two other keyboard instruments prior to the piano, however if it weren't for his later invention the entire musical world would be without one of its greatest instruments.

“Pianist Paul Barton has been playing to elephants since 1996, but insists that he had played alone until Peter the elephant joined in with him during a visit to his sanctuary in Thailand. A younger elephant by the name of Soi also got in the act with some rhythmic dancing.
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“Today, we bring you this unbelivable quadriplegic pianist who doesn’t let his loss of finger mobility stop him playing the hell out of the piano. He does it all with nothing more than the side of his hands, and yet if you close your eyes you’d never know.
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“The teachers were kind of hesitant to teach him, but we did find a teacher that herself used to be a concert pianist, and she became paralyzed in one arm and then she was only able to use two fingers on her other arm,” Lynette Weeks said. “She said if she could play with two fingers she could teach Landon to play with three.”

But he refused to be discouraged and confounded his detractors when he won a place at the elite Royal College of Music in London. When he graduated last year, he made history as the only one-handed pianist ever to have done so.

Award-winning British musician Nicholas McCarthy was born without his right arm, but from a young age he refused to allow his condition to limit his dreams and ambitions.
What is more remarkable is that the 23-year-old piano virtuoso was not born to a musical family and only started playing his beloved instrument at the age of 14.

Knowing that no ordinary knitting kneedles could pull this off, Bryant bought a circular kniting machine called the Addi Express from a wearable tech website and set to work with a supply of conductive silver thread, yarn, and tiny wireless radios. “The conductive thread, used with regular yarn, makes a big, stretchy variable resistor,” Bryant explains. “If it’s twisted, pulled or compressed, more of the conductive thread is touching itself and that distortion affects the amount of voltage that we can read.”

While holding the audience spellbound with her playing, she also won over the largely British crowd of some 2,500 by referring to the evening as a special night not because of her performance, but it coincided with England meeting co-hosts Ukraine at the Euro 2012 football tournament.
Lisitsa, who began playing the piano at the age of three in Kiev, began promoting herself on the video-sharing website five years ago when she posted a video of herself playing the Rachmaninov etude.

Michelle Lamm, 21, was born without sight but not without vision, and that vision included starting her own piano tuning business here.
“My business is starting to pick up” since she founded it in late August, said Lamm, a 2009 graduate of the Florida School for the Deaf and the Blind. “I’ve tuned a bunch of pianos at the University of North Florida.”
Only one school, School of Piano Technology for the Blind in Vancouver, Wash., teaches the blind how to tune, Michelle Lamm said. She graduated in June.

Well, I recognized by the time I was 16 years old that jazz was the music for me. I was playing heavy metal guitar at the time. And I think a lot of teenagers go through this, where they hear something that's - they want something more. They want something more than the simple chords. And they hear jazz and they say wow, listen to this. So I heard some fusion artists at the time. And the - I guess it wasn't that - it was the gateway drug into playing jazz...

Don Cherry (the sports commentator, not the trumpet player) using his hands on his desk for emphasis:

Before Franz Liszt, no one thought a solo pianist could hold anyone's attention, let alone captivate an audience. Liszt set out across Europe in 1839 to prove the conventional wisdom wrong. As part of that mission, he made a radical decision to never bring his scores onstage.
"Before Liszt, it was considered almost in bad taste to play from memory," Hough explains. "Chopin once chided a student: It looked almost arrogant, as if you were pretending that the piece you were playing was by you. Liszt saw that playing the piano, especially for a whole evening in front of an audience, it was a theatrical event that needed not just musical things happening but physical things on the stage."
Liszt deliberately placed the piano in profile to the audience so they could see his face. He'd whip his head around while he played, his long hair flying, beads of sweat shooting into the crowd. He was the first performer to stride out from the wings of the concert hall to take his seat at the piano. Everything we recognize about the modern piano recital — think Keith Jarrett, Glenn Gould, Tori Amos or Elton John — Liszt did first. Even the name "recital" was his invention.

None of Bortnick's family members are musical, said his father Gene Bortnick, who is the boy's full-time manager. Gene Bortnick, who previously owned a computer company and a textile company, said he never intended to create a genius. He and his wife Hannah's main goal in playing the "Baby Einstein" tapes was to keep their son occupied while they got housework and other jobs done. The tapes would entrance the boy and would keep him completely focused.
"We rewound it so many times that it warped the tape," Bortnick said.
Interestingly, Ethan's talents developed further when hard times came to the family. The Bortnicks' younger son Nathan, now 5, had to have several heart surgeries, leaving the parents little time to focus on Ethan. With more time to himself, Ethan's skills skyrocketed.
Since then, he has performed twice on "Good Morning America," on "Access Hollywood," "Inside Edition" and "Martha Stewart." He was named one of "Oprah's All-Time Smartest, Most Talented Kids" and he created and hosted an award-winning national televised concert special on PBS. He has performed on the same stage with such names as Reba McEntire, Natalie Cole and Beyonc».

Finding out the music that someone else likes seems to give you a lot of information about them, quickly. A study by Peter Rentfrow, and Sam Gosling published in Psychological Science in 2006 found that college students getting to know each other over the Internet are more likely to ask about music preferences than about all other categories of conversation topics combined. This research also found that knowing someone's music preferences allowed students to do a reasonable job of predicting some of the new person's personality characteristics and values. Personality characteristics are the basic dimensions of behavior along which people differ. Values are beliefs and goals that influence how people approach the world.

Dr. Charles Limb and his team at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine are trying to answer just that. They’re conducting a revolutionary experiment that studies exactly what the brain is doing during creative expression. Using music as their creative channel, the team uses a functional MRI machine to document the brain’s activity while a person is improvising on a specially designed musical keyboard. It’s a complex test that measures changes in the mind’s blood flow, thus creating real-time pictures of what the brain is doing during creative action.

Counterpoint is recorded in front of a live audience at BBC Broadcasting House in London. Contestants are tested on their knowledge of classical music, pop and film soundtrack trivia. He added: "It's not like The Weakest Link – they're not into making people look stupid – but if they ask 'who wrote the 1812 Overture?' and you say 'The Beatles' you'll look a bit of a prat." Despite being blind since birth, Mr Foster has spent the last 40 years as a self-employed piano tuner.

Researchers tested the mental abilities of senior citizens and discovered that musicians performed better at a number of tests. In particular, musicians excelled at visual memory tasks. While musicians had similar verbal capabilities to non-musicians, the musicians’ ability to memorize new words was markedly better, too. Perhaps most importantly, the musicians’ IQ scores were higher overall than those who spent their lives listening to music rather than performing it.

As a result, among the jewelry Luis has been commissioned to restore and refine the highest possible fidelity and sensitivity as found in the Knudsen, 1853 made in Copenhagen, a console piano styled of the era of the great Mozart. He also is particularly proud of a Collard & Collard grand piano from 1857 that he acquired in London and which is made from hazelwood, making it a unique model.

Doug Shears, 50, of St. Paul, stopped at the McNally Smith piano while walking his dog, Duma. His fingers chose the songs, their automatic inspiration a little bit like dreaming, he said. "Hopefully it will bring out a little spontaneity in the St. Paulites," he said, while Duma tangoed with his leash under the piano. "Hopefully, they won't be able to resist it. I couldn't resist it."

"They rehab the pianos, most of which are quite old and come to us in pretty tricky, not fabulous shape,” said Camille Zamora, co-founding director of Sing for Hope. “We bring them back to life, we decorate them, they live in the parks and public spaces of New York for two weeks, and then they're donated to the schools and hospitals we work with year round.”

Can the power of music make the brain come alive? Throughout his career Dr. Oliver Sacks, neurologist and acclaimed author, has encountered myriad patients who are struggling to cope with debilitating medical conditions, including autism and Tourrette's syndrome. While their ailments vary, many have one thing in common: an appreciation for the therapeutic effects of music.

Playing music is not about showing off, according to Benita Rose. It's about helping people.
Nine of her piano students did just that Sunday, raising $155 for the Massachussetts tornado victims through a benefit recital at Avon Congregational Church, where Rose serves as director of music ministries.

The circa 1920 Boardman and Grey piano that belonged to Sir Roland Hanna will again have the sound of jazz coming from its ivories as Hanna’s wife Ramona Hanna emcee’s a performance by Richard Wyands, accompanied by bassist Paul West and drummer Steve Johns, as the Roland Hanna Trio in “A Tribute to Sir Roland Hanna.”

To get the piano he's going to push, Huggins started a Kickstarter campaign in March to raise funds for the purchase of the baby grand. A regular in Washington Square Park, Huggins raised just under $9,000 by May 5, and bought the piano for a little over that sum off of Craigslist.

First on the above list is to know your piano type. This may seem overly simple, but may get confusing for some folks. It is easy to tell the difference between a grand piano and an upright piano. Some confusion may arise when trying to determine the difference between a spinet, console, studio, or full upright. Without getting into specific measurements, it will help with your lamp choice if you know the height of your piano.

He said: "It's totally revolutionary, the idea of having a piano that can be tuned differently has massive implications on all sorts of different types of music."
The piano works with different slides, allowing fluid tuning on each note. The instrument also needs to be kept at a constant temperature to stop it from warping.
Alison Cox, head of composition at the school, said: "It's absolutely amazing and has the potential to tune to any scale from around the world. It is possible to create a whole new scale and a whole new sound."

"On Wednesday alone they worked a 21 hour day. They left here at 5 and they clocked out at like 2:30 in the morning," said Anita Watkins with Bob's Piano Repair. A truck can move about 16 full size pianos at one time. But because of the response they received, the crew spent three days moving 19 pianos out of the Dakota Dunes. "It's tough to organize 16 or 17 moves in a couple days let alone one day," said Tripp.

"Many of them are a little neurotic, aren't they - a bit 'special?' " offers the colleague, who's a music producer. "Or does that sound too negative?"
"Not neurotic - I'd say they're specialized," the technician answers, poking at the hammerheads with a probe. "When it comes to what I'm doing here, I'm just as neurotic as they are."

Although in a wheelchair, Schofield played the piano at the facility for other patients, staff and visitors. He continued to entertain until about a week before his death, his daughter said.
In an interview with The Patriot Ledger three years ago, the former Quincy and Braintree resident said the reaction he received when he played classical music, Broadway show tunes or popular songs from the 1940s made it worthwhile.
“I just love it,” Schofield, the son of a commercial sea captain, said. “It’s been therapy for me and for others as well.”

"I think the toughest part is to play the piano and the zither simultaneously. We tried many times to figure out this position for my left hand to play the piano, and right hand to play the zither," Lin said. "When I have to look at both the piano and the zither, I really wished my eyes could grow wider apart. If I have to play (them) together, I must play by feel."

Each section (strings, brass, wind, piano) has its own small but elegant auditorium. In the piano section, each teaching studio has not one but two Steinways. Clearly the school, and the aspect of cultural life it represents, is important to the Chinese authorities. A music lesson I witnessed was interrupted by visiting officials from the culture department of Beijing, who wanted to know if the teacher was satisfied with the facilities.

Twice a day, Syd Keithly plays the piano for his fellow residents at Manor Care Dunedin. He's recovering from a stroke that damaged his memory, but the 91-year-old jazz musician can recall and flawlessly play hundreds of songs. "He knows 300 songs. They're all in his head. But he doesn't know his own name," said his wife, Ellie.

During the piano's genesis in the early 1700s, iron was used to make music wire, but the material's tension and strength limited its ability to produce loud sound, Giordano said. As metallurgy practices improved by the 1850s, it became easier to make music wire out of steel, and by the 1880s music wire steel was nearly identical to what's still in pianos today.

The Old Time Music Preservation Association will host the 37th annual World Championship Old-Time Piano Playing Contest May 27-29 at the Hotel Pere Marquette.
This year’s competition features a variety of talent, with 26 contestants from across the United States, including one contestant from Germany, competing right here in Peoria.

While some were busy cleaning the keys, others scraped off the old finish until they came down to bare wood. Students used an adhesive wood glue to patch cracks and splits. They sanded the entire piano and bench, before painting the piano and bench with a shiny black varnish. The piano was then tuned and ready to go.

"Souvenir D'enfance" by Richard Clayderman is not an easy piece to play. The girl plays beautifully, with the sort of lyrical maturity not often found in youngsters new to their instruments. Even more impressive, she first sat down at a piano a mere three years ago.

Yamaha responded the way a visionary would: "I'm confident that I can build this type of organ for 3 yen. I'll repair it, but right now just let me do as I wish."
Yamaha grasped that with every elementary school required to teach Western music, Japan would have to import organs at a huge cost — unless someone knew how to produce them domestically.

Last fall, she regained 98 percent of her hearing when she was fitted with a Nuclear Cochlear Implant from Cochlear Americas. She now can teach music by sound again, a news release from the company states.

Nelson learned to play piano while growing up in tiny Nicollet, Minn., west of Mankato. While working at a music store in Fairmont, the boss told her -- against his better judgment, she said -- that the piano bar in town was hiring. "And that was that," she said. She loved the one-on-one with people, and the spontaneity of requests.

Seven languages. Six musical instruments. Two types of dance and two sports. It all adds up to one busy little Queens girl.
Five-year-old Mabou Loiseau's parents spend $1,500 a week on tutors and lessons - and she spends seven hours a day in some type of instruction, with Sundays off.

1. Force them to play the piano. (I think I'm being facetious, but I'm honestly not sure.) All my perfect girls play. I'm not saying playing the piano is the only path to greatness, but there can't be many smoother, clearer paths. There needs to be a well-known study of the correlation between playing the piano and overall awesomeness.

But Mildred isn't a resident. At ninety-five years old, she's the entertainment! "I don't know why they have me," she says with a giggle. "We play the old tunes, maybe that's what they like." "They're just wonderful," says Donna, "I just love Mildred, and Jan too, but Mildred's an old lady like me."